by Jordan Hilger, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) - A Korean evangelist was murdered in Turkey this month, and local believers are seeing it as a harbinger of things to come.
41 year-old Jinwook Kim was stabbed twice in the heart and once in the back in the city of Diyarbakir by a 16-year-old authorities said merely wanted to steal his phone, avowing there was no anti-Christian sentiment.
“This wasn’t just a robbery; they came to kill him,” another Turkish evangelist interviewed by International Christian Concern countered. “We always get threats. A brother prophesied a few days ago that [the government is] going to kick out these foreigners, and probably kill a few Turkish brothers."
"This may be a sign," he added.
Although Kim's stabbing was the first martyrdom in Turkey since the "missionary massacres" of 2007 in which three employees of a Bible publishing house were targeted, other Christians testified that the attack followed on the heels of a wave deportations and seemed planned.
Kim had been a resident in Turkey for 5 years and had been called to Diyarbakir a year ago to pastor a Christian community there.